Now Where the Hell Am I?

I love setting almost as much as I love dialogue. That is, a lot. This is probably a good thing. My day job is literally putting together sets for TV, picking out the details appropriate for characters. Trying to imagine their life and what it looks like in the form of a bedroom or a barn. It's one extra layer to the story. Layers add the richness.

Sadly, this thing intrinsic to any story, unless you're story is set in the infinite abyss, which still kind of counts, is often underutilized. An utter shame it is when writers slap a location onto their story and call it good enough.

Choosing Your Broad Setting

Let's talk about the fictional Cullfield, Maine for a second. Maine is not an incidental setting for Natalie's Diary. I picked it for a few very important reasons. One, New England throws hella creepy vibes. It is a natural location for anything spooky and eerie. Being the section of the US settled the earliest, it has a metric tonne of history. It has ghost stories galore. Its weather is kind of abysmal and its proximity to the ocean and other bodies of water make it foggy. Hello mystery vibes. Two, Maine's proximity to Canada makes it a big part of the Underground Railroad and the Prohibition era. The sneaky, sneaky history of hiding booze and slaves riddles Maine full of hidden rooms, tunnels, and other mystery writer tools. Three, the small town vibe of a little town in the middle of Maine is the perfect place for a POC girl from Boston to feel alienated and out of the loop.

All these things lend something to the story, both in plot device and in tone, making it the perfect storm for the story.

Think about how geography could lend itself to your story. I personally adore the idea of urban fantasy set in New Orleans. Why wouldn't you? It's entrenched in history of taking in outcasts. There's already a strong presence of ritual and religious themes. There are some of the creepiest haunted mansions and cemeteries and the innate danger of the Bayou.

Does the sprawling Midwest with its farm towns and endless rolling fields of wheat not lend itself to a story about depression? Especially when it gives way to a blinding whiteout of a winter.

Even Stephanie Meyer put research into choosing Forks, Washington as the setting for Twilight because it rained there more than anywhere else in the US. Consider that your minimum standard.

Fictional Vs. Reality

I sometimes see this debate. I personally approach them very similarly. The fictional setting simply allows me more control and with that control, I cater the setting to my story a little more. 

For example, for both, research is necessary. Despite Cullfield, Maine's fictional nature, it's still heavily inspired by the real towns of Maine. In particular, Cullfield is geographically based on the location of Dexter whenever characters ever talk about how long it takes to get to a different city. Some details of the history are borrowed from Topsham and Brunswick, Maine, mostly over their association with the Underground Railroad. The actual history of Maine is pretty influential to Cullfield. 

Alternatively, I could've picked Dexter as the actual setting of Natalie's Diary and stuck to the details. However, I don't know actual Dexter well enough. I feel a little better trying to capture the flavor of a place than staying precisely true to it. There's also no need to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to make up everything with a fictional setting, even if it's fantasy (unless, of course, you want to build it entirely from scratch. That's cool, too.) Read up on history, get inspired by the way cultures ran their monarchies and approached family dynamics, politics, work, et cetera. Use reality as a guide line and flourish it a little to serve your story. 

Real settings can also be great. There's something about a well-written book in a different city that makes me want to travel there. The tricky part of a real city is making it seem real if you've never been there. These kinds of things need honesty and color, I think. Bring in a setting real tight. Focus on the Brooklyn pizza shop around the corner instead of the view of the Empire State building. When I think of real settings, I think of Indiana in All the Bright Places. There are a ton of weird Indiana landmarks, like gravity-propelled rollercoaster and a giant ball of paint, but there is also a simple bridge you need to get to one side of town to the other and dirt country roads. I like seeing the hometown version of any place. 

The Street Was Full of Brick Buildings, Red and Brown with Signs Hanging Over Doorways...

So, you've picked your setting and now you want to show it off, but listing paragraphs and paragraphs of detail to show everyone how much you thought about your setting down to the grout color between the tile. You know I'm not serious. I hope you know I'm not serious.

The art of establishing setting is in brevity and in specificity. I strongly believe that if you need to characterize a one-off character quickly, you describe their shoes. If you want to characterize your setting, you describe the cars driving around in it.

He jammed the hybrid between two mud-speckled F150s in the parking lot.

In a sentence, you know that he is not from around there. It's not likely a big city. There's mud, and there's a presence of guys who drive muddy pick-up trucks. In a sentence, the setting is implied without describing mud puddles on the ground or the view from the parking lot. Cars is too general a term. If I replaced those Fords with glinting sedans, it would be an entirely different setting. If I said they were a pair of electric cars, you might guess it happened on the west coast.

Drop in the detail. Drop in the specifics. Fight in as much detail in as few words. The ox-cart rattles over the cobble stones. The 4x4 shudders over a washboard range road. A roadster zips over asphalt. Summer tires skid over pack ice. Snow chains crunch through 7 inches of snowfall. The import bottomed out over the speed bump. The Grand Am clunked over the pothole.

The car drove down the road. Two nouns and a verb get you a setting, yeah? Optimize your sentences. Squeeze the last drops of usefulness out of them.

Familiarity

These are the kinds of details people groan over because they know the drill. It taps into memories. It fills in the location details for you. My best tip for creating fictional locations relies on that. Let memory do the work. Invoke something familiar. As an example, everyone's been to a bowling alley. I'd hope. I love bowling alleys, partly because you can drink at them and partly because they are always these nostalgic places with outdated decor. Mention the cartoon pins dancing on the monitors and the glow of black light and the reader will fill in the rest.

There are some things that have a kind of universality. Team Spirit is set in small town readers and beta readers for the other stories in the collection say of fictional Murphy, Alberta, it's just like [insert home town here]. And the town varies. It's just like my home town. It's like every small town across the prairie provinces. There's the graffitied water tower, the designated smokers spot in the backwoods behind the high school, there's the lake everyone kills their summer in.

If I were to propose a city as a set, those universal details would be in everyone knowing which neighborhood is the sketchy one, going to that one local hole-in-the-wall restaurant after school for the best Vietnamese subs, or watching hoards of sports fans in jerseys heading to the stadium on game day. These are things people can connect with. You don't need to spend a lot of time describing a universal experience. The universal experience lends a sense of honesty and a story can always do with more honesty.

Tone

I like to think of my settings as a kind of character. They have moods. They have sticky hot days and thunderstorms that shake your bones and soak into your skin. Matching the weather to the tone of your scene might be a little on the nose if you do it all the time, but if you've established miserable constant rain showers, throwing a convenient one in won't hurt.

There are other factors other than weather that can establish a mood. The frustration of rush hour, the eeriness of an ill-populated town. The ripples waving through fields can invoke both the freedom of an ocean or the loneliness of seeing miles and miles into the distance. There's both anonymity and hope in New York. There's big dreams and crushing reality in LA.

The Right Set for the Right Scene

Some of the best advice I ever read was simple. Could a change in setting amp up the tension of a scene? This lead to an epiphany for me, ending in a reveal of shock-worthy information coming out in a hospital waiting room instead of the comfortable privacy of a family living room.

Think of George W. Bush being told about 9/11 while reading a childrens' book to a group of kids. That's the kind of terrible timing and tension you need in your book.

What happens when you attempt to stage a fight in a library? Have a romantic scene on an ice rink. Trap your character and force them to deal with something on a bus or a plane. Have the worst possible thing happen at the worst possible place.

* * *

THURSDAY DRAW WINNER

This week, @Naanaofficial won my random draw from commenters so far on this book, kind of befitting as she was also the first. (I hope you don't mind I ended up using your first chapter.) She submitted to me an excerpt from her book Playing the Billionaire. 

~

Inwardly sighing, I exited the room and out of Hammond Towers feeling accomplished at getting the internship.

I stopped to pick up an iced Vanilla coffee from Starbucks before heading back to my apartment.

My black heels clicking on the tiled floor, I entered the building and waved to the doorman Gary before proceeding to the elevator. Living in such a grand hotel has its perks but can get really annoying when you have to ride up thirty floors to your apartment.

I'm so glad Mother dearest has kind-hearted and super rich siblings.

Gullible idiots.

Just pull the 'my mum's dead' card and they fall for it so badly.

They have all the money in the world that I could ask for. But I want more.

I'm greedy like that.

Once the doors closed, I threw away the empty cup into the bin located in the corner of the elevator and pressed the button leading to the thirtieth floor of the thirty five floored building.

Taking my phone out of my purse, I quickly put the office's number into my contacts. Momentarily surprised at the little numbers I had in my phone, I counted to see I had ten contacts.

That's what you get for being evil.

Five were family members and two friends from college with whom I cut contact with as I didn't want to add them to my messed up life and the last being the office.

The other two were from my other life.

The elevator dinged to a stop and I looked up to see we had stopped at floor twenty three. Once the doors slid open, a tall handsome brunette stepped inside the elevator wearing an expensive looking grey suit and heavily scented cologne that momentarily drugged me.

I nodded at him when he gave me a small wave, the doors closing behind me. He pressed floor 29 before stepping beside me. I looked at him properly, studying his face that looked so familiar to me.

He noticed me staring at him and he chuckled slightly, the deep, melodic tone filling the silent elevator.

So, one of the first things I think of is a problem I have myself: writing characters alone. This is a tricky thing today and I honestly have to drag myself through scenes characters have to go through alone. In this case, it's an easy problem to solve. You've set yourself up for the possibility of introducing Grace and her evil personality. Starbucks! A perfect opportunity to give Grace someone to talk to. There's nothing like an interaction with a service industry worker to show a character's humility or lackthereof. You don't have to listen to me, but I personally think an exchange with the Starbucks barista could go a long way to introduce the action. A kind of 'get used to taking my order. You see that building over there? I work there now' exchange could go a long way to showing Grace's personality without stating it ('I'm greedy like that', 'that's what you get for being evil'). You've given yourself the tools to do it off the top.

Into the second paragraph, you could get into what I was talking about before with the specificity (shoes!) 'My Louboutins clicking against the marble floor' would be the same amount of words, but tell a reader that both Grace and the hotel are high class. I like the fact that she's annoyed by having to take an elevator to her classy, presumably penthouse room.

There gets to be a bit of 'telling' (as much as I hate this term). I don't feel personally that you necessarily need to explain how Grace gained her apartment right away. If there was a smoother way to slip in that her aunts and uncles bankroll her and her mother is dead, you could wait. Her greed and desire for more money could come out a little more fluidly, too. Maybe she's daydreaming of an even classier apartment with a better view and a faster elevator and her new internship's going to get her even more money.

Lastly, toward the end, could go for more of that specificity. Does Grace, lover of money, recognize the suit or cologne as an expensive brand? I would buy her knowing that kind of thing (wouldn't you want to, if you a potential gold digger?) Even if she doesn't know the brand, perhaps she knows the style. Typically there's English, Italian, and American. English and Italian being known for slimmer and athletic builds respectively. Even giving that detail says a teeny bit more about this man in the elevator. Even if your readers don't know exactly what an Italian suit looks like, they know that Grace does, and that simultaneously says something about her.

Definitely not a bad start. There's a little bit of telling, but you don't need to tell the reader what Grace is like! You do a good job of showing how poorly she keeps in contact with people. You show she has expensive taste, but still is willing to do work to get more (hence internship).